Post by cw on Oct 9, 2010 11:24:43 GMT 1
Sharon has done some first-rate press recently but this is one of the best interviews she's done. In a field where too many lazy bastards proliferate; I was pleasantly surprised by the perceptiveness of this interviewer especially with regards to Sharon herself.
source: www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=AGENDA-qqqs=agenda-qqqid=51916-qqqx=1.asp
Corr Values
by Nadine O'Regan
3rd October 2010
Sharon Corr, looking every inch the glossy, mature pop star, is seated in a plush hotel suite talking about her new solo album when a weird sneezing noise emanates from the double doors leading to the bedroom nearby.
‘‘Sorry!’ whimpers a voice through the door apologetically. I belatedly realise that we’re not as alone as I’d thought.
An eavesdropper, albeit a very mannerly one, appears to be lurking in the bedroom of the suite. ‘‘Caroline’s next door,” says Sharon Corr, smiling.
Er, is the rest of the family listening to us from the bathroom or the cupboard? For a moment, I half expect Jim and Andrea to burst out from the loo and start singing me a tune, Glee-style. (Perhaps when a Corrs member says they’re doing a solo album, this merely means the others exist just out of shot, twanging away mournfully on unplugged guitars.)
Sharon Corr laughs. It transpires that it’s not her drummer sister Caroline in the bedroom next door, but her best friend Caroline. Later, more confusion: Sharon Corr will tell me her family are on the way to the hotel.
How nice and supportive, I think to myself.
But she’s not referring to her three siblings, but to her barrister husband Gavin Bonnar and her two gorgeous, fair-haired children, Cathal and Flori, who I’ll later see skipping about in the lobby of the Four Seasons as they wait with their father.
Like most people, I’ve a notion of the Corrs as being as close together as the prongs of a fork. ‘‘We were in each other’s pockets for about 20 years on the road.
We became one thing with four people in it,” Sharon says.
Together, the Corrs sold millions of records, with albums such as Talk On Corners and In Blue, and became one of Ireland’s proudest exports - even if you weren’t into the music, who didn’t feel a flicker of pride that we’d managed to turn out such a bunch of outrageously good-looking and talented people?
The Corrs weren’t the hippest band on the block, but they steered their own steady ship, merging trad with pop, the fiddle and bodhrán with glossy lipsticks and backless tops.
But it’s been a long time since the Corrs released an album of original material (their last album proper, in that respect, was 2004’s Borrowed Heaven) and, in the interim, the music industry has been cannibalised by the internet, the economy has relocated to the toilet and the Corrs themselves have married, had kids and developed second careers.
Jim has one child; Caroline has three with her property developer husband; and Andrea, the youngest, has released a solo album, dabbled in acting and married Brett Desmond, the son of billionaire Dermot Desmond, last year.
Still, some things abide. It hardly needs noting that Sharon Corr remains enchantingly beautiful. Clad in a tiny green silk top paired with black trousers, her bone structure would make an artist weep. She’s also extremely likeable and easy to talk to: she thinks through her answers instead of parroting off soundbites and she’s a deeper, smarter presence than all those lingering, soft-focus MTV videos would have you believe.
Corr also wears her heart on her sleeve - mention her mother Jean, who died in 1999, and she can’t help it: tears well up.
If Andrea, as front woman, was the obvious choice to make a solo album, Sharon is the one that many seasoned observers would have backed.
Despite being side of stage playing the violin and offering backing vocals, she’s always had strong songwriting chops - she was responsible for hits including So Young, Radio and Long Night.
Perhaps more importantly, from an industry perspective, she doesn’t want to break away from the trad-pop sound that made the Corrs successful.
Her debut solo album, Dream Of You, offers a mature, easy-listening take on the Corrs trademark style, with plenty of covers to help generate a little buzz in advance. (After Phillip Schofield heard she’d covered Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime by the Korgis, he invited her onto his This Morning show to perform it.)
Corr was nervous, nonetheless, about the prospect of going it alone. ‘‘It’s more daunting to get on stage and bear the responsibility yourself.
The four of us were a great support to each other.
You forget how integral these people were to your performance and you to theirs. I’m learning so much about my voice.”
Ah, the voice. It’d be tempting to think that if Sharon Corr could emerge from her sister’s shadow and suddenly start singing live, then she must have been as strong vocally all along.
But the truth is that Sharon Corr had a steep learning curve ahead of her. ‘‘I’d been the backing vocalist for years,” she says. ‘‘I’d take the lead on one song at the gigs.
That was great, but once I knew I was doing a solo album, I knew I had to work on my vocals.
‘‘Singing back-up is a totally different technique because backing vocalists need to support the lead singer and blend behind them.
Whereas I needed to carry the song.
So I picked one song, Black Is The Colour, and I just played it for two years. I tried to sing it differently every day - and, yes, my husband was tired of it.
But the only way to change your voice is to try and keep doing the same thing slightly differently each time.”
After working for two years on the album, flitting in and out of Windmill Lane studios in Dublin, one of her favourite tracks on the record is a slowed-down version of Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat.
‘‘I’ve always loved the song,” Corr says. ‘‘It was very much part of my teenage years.
About a year and a half ago, I was in France, lying in bed on my summer holidays, and I couldn’t get to sleep with the racket coming from upstairs.
At about five in the morning, that song came on.
And I thought, ‘I love that song, I’m going to cover it.’ ‘‘The lyrics are very sad.
They’re such an insight into what it must be like to be homosexual in a predominantly heterosexual society.
Nothing before ever let me understand it as much as the lyrics of that song. So I wanted to bring out the lyrics, sing them as they must be felt.
We rehearsed it and felt our way through it.
And then I ran some dark, Cajun violin through the end, and it became very epic.”
Corr is clearly very ambitious for her solo album - she maintains a well-updated Twitter account promoting her various TV and radio appearances - and the album has a smoothly-produced, multi-territory friendly sheen.
Still, perhaps it’s just the doe eyes, but she often seems like a fragile soul, anxious to promote her music, but hold onto her privacy too. ‘‘The thing is, in Ireland, people do have a sense of having known you your whole life. It has been documented what we did together.
And we grew up in music as well.
I’m a firm believer in that this is about music. It’s not about what my house looks like or whether I have a horse. I share my musical life with my family, so it’s relevant.
‘‘The press have been our friends. It’s a symbiotic relationship: I respect the press, and I’ve been respected by them.
But there’s a fine line.
For my wedding, I was approached by people, but it was my wedding. I’ve no issue with anyone putting their wedding in magazines, but it’s never been something I wanted to do.
A marriage is one of the most sacred moments of your life. Why would you have strangers involved in that moment?”
One thing that this observer was initially surprised by was that the Corrs talked so readily about their mother in the wake of her passing. In away, it seemed as though they dealt with their grief through sharing it with their fans.
Sharon Corr’s eyes glisten at the mention of her mother - for the family, she says, there was no way around discussing their mother’s death.
‘‘It’s something that happens in life, and you can’t pretend that it didn’t.We were hugely successful and our mother died bang in the middle of it.
The press were at the funeral.
I never go into huge detail, but I understand that my mother would have been proud of [the press attention].
She would have loved it.
‘‘The support in Ireland was phenomenal. The letters we got - just heartbreaking letters of sympathy, so there was nothing about that that was a negative forme.
We immediately immersed ourselves back in music afterwards.
We did the MTV Unplugged, which our mother would have loved.”
In the years since they’ve been away, the sisters have hung on to their enigmatic allure, but Jim Corr has become the subject of much caricaturing in the wake of a peculiar interview on The Last Word on Today FM, in which he gave vent to a number of surprising opinions concerning the September 11 attacks and the Lisbon Treaty.
On his website, Jim refutes the notion that he also has an opinion on ‘‘shape shifting reptilians’’, but adds: ‘‘I do have opinions on False flag operations [staged terrorist attacks] including 9/11 and 7/7, the global warming scam, the coming one-world government dictatorship, toxic ingredients in vaccines, the engineered financial collapse’’.
For the record, this is the only subject for which Sharon Corr comes out with what sounds like a very prepared soundbite: ‘‘I believe in Jim’s right to express himself. I don’t hold those opinions myself.
But I respect his right to have them.”
She doesn’t go in for similar theories, but she is very engaged on the subject of the North. ‘‘I have huge family connections in the north of Ireland,” she says. ‘‘My husband is from there. His parents and sister live there. I live in Dublin, but for me, it’s a personal thing.
‘‘I think the problem with unrest in the North and dissident groups firing up again is that there are so many other elements involved: drugs, money-laundering, many different things.
And these things can be much more of a requirement in a recession.
In a weird way, it’s like a job, but you’re a terrorist.
It’s a recruitment ground for people who have been badly affected by the recession.
I hate the thought of that for the North.
There was a beautiful era of peace there. It’s almost like people had started to get reconditioned to normal life.”
Still, although the Corrs have been involved in numerous laudable charity efforts and social awareness campaigns, she would infinitely prefer to leave public political discussions to others. It’s the music she’s here for, whether solo or as a group.
Although Andrea is rumoured to be playing Jane Eyre on the Gate stage in Dublin soon, Sharon is certain that another Corrs album will loom on the horizon in the future.
‘‘My sisters gave me a lovely card once for my birthday,” she says. ‘‘It said: ‘Sisters by chance, friends by choice’.
I am one member of the Corrs, and always will be.”
source: www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=AGENDA-qqqs=agenda-qqqid=51916-qqqx=1.asp
Corr Values
by Nadine O'Regan
3rd October 2010
Sharon Corr, looking every inch the glossy, mature pop star, is seated in a plush hotel suite talking about her new solo album when a weird sneezing noise emanates from the double doors leading to the bedroom nearby.
‘‘Sorry!’ whimpers a voice through the door apologetically. I belatedly realise that we’re not as alone as I’d thought.
An eavesdropper, albeit a very mannerly one, appears to be lurking in the bedroom of the suite. ‘‘Caroline’s next door,” says Sharon Corr, smiling.
Er, is the rest of the family listening to us from the bathroom or the cupboard? For a moment, I half expect Jim and Andrea to burst out from the loo and start singing me a tune, Glee-style. (Perhaps when a Corrs member says they’re doing a solo album, this merely means the others exist just out of shot, twanging away mournfully on unplugged guitars.)
Sharon Corr laughs. It transpires that it’s not her drummer sister Caroline in the bedroom next door, but her best friend Caroline. Later, more confusion: Sharon Corr will tell me her family are on the way to the hotel.
How nice and supportive, I think to myself.
But she’s not referring to her three siblings, but to her barrister husband Gavin Bonnar and her two gorgeous, fair-haired children, Cathal and Flori, who I’ll later see skipping about in the lobby of the Four Seasons as they wait with their father.
Like most people, I’ve a notion of the Corrs as being as close together as the prongs of a fork. ‘‘We were in each other’s pockets for about 20 years on the road.
We became one thing with four people in it,” Sharon says.
Together, the Corrs sold millions of records, with albums such as Talk On Corners and In Blue, and became one of Ireland’s proudest exports - even if you weren’t into the music, who didn’t feel a flicker of pride that we’d managed to turn out such a bunch of outrageously good-looking and talented people?
The Corrs weren’t the hippest band on the block, but they steered their own steady ship, merging trad with pop, the fiddle and bodhrán with glossy lipsticks and backless tops.
But it’s been a long time since the Corrs released an album of original material (their last album proper, in that respect, was 2004’s Borrowed Heaven) and, in the interim, the music industry has been cannibalised by the internet, the economy has relocated to the toilet and the Corrs themselves have married, had kids and developed second careers.
Jim has one child; Caroline has three with her property developer husband; and Andrea, the youngest, has released a solo album, dabbled in acting and married Brett Desmond, the son of billionaire Dermot Desmond, last year.
Still, some things abide. It hardly needs noting that Sharon Corr remains enchantingly beautiful. Clad in a tiny green silk top paired with black trousers, her bone structure would make an artist weep. She’s also extremely likeable and easy to talk to: she thinks through her answers instead of parroting off soundbites and she’s a deeper, smarter presence than all those lingering, soft-focus MTV videos would have you believe.
Corr also wears her heart on her sleeve - mention her mother Jean, who died in 1999, and she can’t help it: tears well up.
If Andrea, as front woman, was the obvious choice to make a solo album, Sharon is the one that many seasoned observers would have backed.
Despite being side of stage playing the violin and offering backing vocals, she’s always had strong songwriting chops - she was responsible for hits including So Young, Radio and Long Night.
Perhaps more importantly, from an industry perspective, she doesn’t want to break away from the trad-pop sound that made the Corrs successful.
Her debut solo album, Dream Of You, offers a mature, easy-listening take on the Corrs trademark style, with plenty of covers to help generate a little buzz in advance. (After Phillip Schofield heard she’d covered Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime by the Korgis, he invited her onto his This Morning show to perform it.)
Corr was nervous, nonetheless, about the prospect of going it alone. ‘‘It’s more daunting to get on stage and bear the responsibility yourself.
The four of us were a great support to each other.
You forget how integral these people were to your performance and you to theirs. I’m learning so much about my voice.”
Ah, the voice. It’d be tempting to think that if Sharon Corr could emerge from her sister’s shadow and suddenly start singing live, then she must have been as strong vocally all along.
But the truth is that Sharon Corr had a steep learning curve ahead of her. ‘‘I’d been the backing vocalist for years,” she says. ‘‘I’d take the lead on one song at the gigs.
That was great, but once I knew I was doing a solo album, I knew I had to work on my vocals.
‘‘Singing back-up is a totally different technique because backing vocalists need to support the lead singer and blend behind them.
Whereas I needed to carry the song.
So I picked one song, Black Is The Colour, and I just played it for two years. I tried to sing it differently every day - and, yes, my husband was tired of it.
But the only way to change your voice is to try and keep doing the same thing slightly differently each time.”
After working for two years on the album, flitting in and out of Windmill Lane studios in Dublin, one of her favourite tracks on the record is a slowed-down version of Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat.
‘‘I’ve always loved the song,” Corr says. ‘‘It was very much part of my teenage years.
About a year and a half ago, I was in France, lying in bed on my summer holidays, and I couldn’t get to sleep with the racket coming from upstairs.
At about five in the morning, that song came on.
And I thought, ‘I love that song, I’m going to cover it.’ ‘‘The lyrics are very sad.
They’re such an insight into what it must be like to be homosexual in a predominantly heterosexual society.
Nothing before ever let me understand it as much as the lyrics of that song. So I wanted to bring out the lyrics, sing them as they must be felt.
We rehearsed it and felt our way through it.
And then I ran some dark, Cajun violin through the end, and it became very epic.”
Corr is clearly very ambitious for her solo album - she maintains a well-updated Twitter account promoting her various TV and radio appearances - and the album has a smoothly-produced, multi-territory friendly sheen.
Still, perhaps it’s just the doe eyes, but she often seems like a fragile soul, anxious to promote her music, but hold onto her privacy too. ‘‘The thing is, in Ireland, people do have a sense of having known you your whole life. It has been documented what we did together.
And we grew up in music as well.
I’m a firm believer in that this is about music. It’s not about what my house looks like or whether I have a horse. I share my musical life with my family, so it’s relevant.
‘‘The press have been our friends. It’s a symbiotic relationship: I respect the press, and I’ve been respected by them.
But there’s a fine line.
For my wedding, I was approached by people, but it was my wedding. I’ve no issue with anyone putting their wedding in magazines, but it’s never been something I wanted to do.
A marriage is one of the most sacred moments of your life. Why would you have strangers involved in that moment?”
One thing that this observer was initially surprised by was that the Corrs talked so readily about their mother in the wake of her passing. In away, it seemed as though they dealt with their grief through sharing it with their fans.
Sharon Corr’s eyes glisten at the mention of her mother - for the family, she says, there was no way around discussing their mother’s death.
‘‘It’s something that happens in life, and you can’t pretend that it didn’t.We were hugely successful and our mother died bang in the middle of it.
The press were at the funeral.
I never go into huge detail, but I understand that my mother would have been proud of [the press attention].
She would have loved it.
‘‘The support in Ireland was phenomenal. The letters we got - just heartbreaking letters of sympathy, so there was nothing about that that was a negative forme.
We immediately immersed ourselves back in music afterwards.
We did the MTV Unplugged, which our mother would have loved.”
In the years since they’ve been away, the sisters have hung on to their enigmatic allure, but Jim Corr has become the subject of much caricaturing in the wake of a peculiar interview on The Last Word on Today FM, in which he gave vent to a number of surprising opinions concerning the September 11 attacks and the Lisbon Treaty.
On his website, Jim refutes the notion that he also has an opinion on ‘‘shape shifting reptilians’’, but adds: ‘‘I do have opinions on False flag operations [staged terrorist attacks] including 9/11 and 7/7, the global warming scam, the coming one-world government dictatorship, toxic ingredients in vaccines, the engineered financial collapse’’.
For the record, this is the only subject for which Sharon Corr comes out with what sounds like a very prepared soundbite: ‘‘I believe in Jim’s right to express himself. I don’t hold those opinions myself.
But I respect his right to have them.”
She doesn’t go in for similar theories, but she is very engaged on the subject of the North. ‘‘I have huge family connections in the north of Ireland,” she says. ‘‘My husband is from there. His parents and sister live there. I live in Dublin, but for me, it’s a personal thing.
‘‘I think the problem with unrest in the North and dissident groups firing up again is that there are so many other elements involved: drugs, money-laundering, many different things.
And these things can be much more of a requirement in a recession.
In a weird way, it’s like a job, but you’re a terrorist.
It’s a recruitment ground for people who have been badly affected by the recession.
I hate the thought of that for the North.
There was a beautiful era of peace there. It’s almost like people had started to get reconditioned to normal life.”
Still, although the Corrs have been involved in numerous laudable charity efforts and social awareness campaigns, she would infinitely prefer to leave public political discussions to others. It’s the music she’s here for, whether solo or as a group.
Although Andrea is rumoured to be playing Jane Eyre on the Gate stage in Dublin soon, Sharon is certain that another Corrs album will loom on the horizon in the future.
‘‘My sisters gave me a lovely card once for my birthday,” she says. ‘‘It said: ‘Sisters by chance, friends by choice’.
I am one member of the Corrs, and always will be.”
